CREATING CREATIVE ENVIRONMENTS

In this sharing, Pua Chee Ling, Chief Executive of Dika College, lends her insights to the idea of creating environments that nurture possibilities and illustrates the imperatives of ensuring that such a climate is seamlessly fostered through a child’s developmental stages; hereby empowering them to create their own futures.

Let’s Create Empowering Environments Where Our Young Can Discover Their Passions. 

By Pua Chee Ling

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I follow with great interest the ideas and concepts by author and world renowned educationalist, Sir Kenneth Robinson. His concept  of distinguishing education as an organic system, vis a vis  a mechanical one; and that successful school administration is a matter of fostering a resourceful climate as opposed to a command and control one; are models that hold great relevance in this day and age.

Robinson’s TED talk presentation entitled "Do schools kill creativity?" is the most watched TED talk of all time. In his book of the same title, Robinson suggests that to engage and succeed, education should foster diversity and individualisation through the learning process and promote curiosity through creative teaching. For this to take place, we need to focus on the creation of empowering environments that will spur the young to discover their passions and chart their own futures. 

#Creating a climate of possibility

Do children need us to create their future; or do they need us to create an environment which will help them create their own future?

We often do the former, when what is needed from us is the creation of a nurturing environment that nurtures creativity, innovativeness, perseverance and true grit. We hold on, when what is asked of us is to let go and allow the child to explore his environment within secure boundaries. 

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#Harness natural creative abilities

Take a tottering toddler, who is just learning how to balance but who exuberantly attempts to scale up or down a flight of stairs. How do we set a climate possibility for this child who is barely two feet tall but seem to have a confidence of a six-footer? Do we just leave him to his devices and let him explore his surroundings?

The answer is yes; let him go, but within the confines of a secure environment. What we have to do is to equip him with a safe environment; for example installing guardrails along the stairs and perhaps even padding its surface with carpeting. Provide him the encouragement by walking behind him to provide physical support, because if you collaborate with your child, the both of you will see each other for what can be achieved instead of what can’t.  

 “We’re all born with immense, natural, creative abilities. Children demonstrate them all,” said Robinson who further postulates that if these creative capacities are left unharnessed, they would start slipping away as we grow older.

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#Creating creative energies

So, if we are creating environments that are sterile instead of vibrant, subdued instead cheerful, why then do we expect our children to be rambunctious and outspoken?

Creativity is a central element of what sets humans apart from other forms of life on earth and so the mission of parents and educators should be to bring out the unique creative energy within each child. Robinson fittingly expressed this when he said, “We are educating people out of their capacities. We don’t grow into creativity, rather we grow out.”

An entire ecosystem that currently rides on conformity and compliance may need a total revamp if we are to create a climate of valuable learning. In place of this must be a framework and infrastructure that supports educators and parents in their effort to equip children with confidence to enter the world on their own terms.

#Growing up together

It is important for parents to keep pace with their children. Ironically in many cases, a child grows up but his parents do not. Adults impose the same fear upon a child who is two, on one who is twelve, and right through to when he is twenty two. Spoon feeding is a convenient way to avert the mess of having to clean up after a two year old’s spaghetti dinner, and asserting a ban on your daughter dating absolves you of your worry that she would be distracted to the point of failing her exams.

Parents must acknowledge that as children grow, it is a natural process for them to be intrigued by the world around them. Instead of being sieged with fear and mistrust, parents must acknowledge individuality and encourage exploration; no matter how inconvenient the process may be. There is also a need to re-think our home and school environments, to make it places where multiple types of intelligence thrive. Failure to do so, as Robinson said, is tantamount to the erosion of the culture of learning.

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#Scaling it together

An insurmountable task it may seem and it will be if we are to undertake it alone; but as a community of stakeholders, the possibilities are infinite. Starting with the initiative to better equip ourselves with the know-how on child development and the latest engagement techniques; we can begin to take baby steps towards the larger of goal of creating winning environments that cultivate a valuable learning experience for our young. 

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Article commissioned by

CayD Communications.

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